


A Simple Gift

by esteoflorien



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-11 23:45:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteoflorien/pseuds/esteoflorien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas reflects on his good fortune, and gives a gift. <br/>(First published on Tumblr in 2013.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Simple Gift

Secrets in the servants’ hall are few and far between. When word gets round that Lady Grantham had heard Nanny West insulting Miss Sybbie’s heritage, he relishes the appreciative nods he receives from the others. “I told you,” he finds himself saying, “all I did was apprise Lady Grantham of the fact that Nanny West seemed to spend an awful lot of time outside of the nursery. That’s all.” His modesty seems to garner him even more approval. It’s a heady feeling, this kind of respect, and while he knows that Bates suspects he was more lucky than observant, it doesn’t matter. He savors Bates’s grudging nod and excuses himself.

He doesn’t know what possesses him to pluck the pink chrysanthemum from the vase in the morning room. He glanced upon it when he passed it earlier in the day, and now that he’s seeing it again, he can’t get it out of his head that a little girl would appreciate such a flower. He pulls it from the vase and shakes the water off on the carpet, blunts the stem with his pocketknife.

“Look here,” he tells the little girl, when he spies her out and about. “I’ve got you a present.”

Miss Sybbie looks up at him thoughtfully, her eyes very wide. She looks just like her mother, and he freezes, caught in a moment of surprise sorrow. If he can’t look at the child without seeing the mother, how must it be for Branson? He hasn’t thought of it like that before. He rather thinks no one else has, either.

The girl furrows her brow, her eyelids crinkling. She’s getting ready to cry, he realizes. He’s been quiet for too long, forgotten the child is too young to speak. Stupid of him.

“It’s a flower,” he says, holding it out to her. “It’s pink.”

She babbles, reaching up eagerly. A silly gift for a toddler, he decides, watching her chubby little hand close around the petals. She laughs delightedly and runs back to Nanny.

He watches her play. The stem lies discarded on the grass, but the girl has shared the pink petals with her cousin. He smiles. A child worthy of her mother, then.

He can’t get the childish voice and impish smile out of his head as he walks back to the house. If he were to have a daughter, one day, he fancies she’d look like Miss Sybbie. 


End file.
